SHEC Energy's suite of technologies has applications across the CSP industry. This includes:
A multitude of SHEC Energy's point focus solar collectors will transport heat to a central boiler to produce steam for a steam turbine, or alternatively to thermal storage for night production of power. SHEC Energy has partnered with a major Engineering, Construction and Procurement (ECP) firm for the large scale deployment of this technology. This technology fits a market space of between 10 megawatts (MW) to the gigawatt (1,000 MW) range. Although steam power generation is possible at less than 10MW, the cost of the power block increases rapidly on a per-unit-energy basis. Solar steam turbine systems also lend themselves well to Integrated Solar Combined Cycle (ISCC) power plants. These are power plants that can use fuel as a back-up to produce power when the sun is not shining. One of the big issues with renewable energy systems, whether they be wind or solar, is that they are intermittent in nature. This therefore, requires 100% of conventional power being available to provide power when the renewable systems are not generating. This effectively doubles infrastructure costs in the replication of the power block for each power plant. With ISCC plants, the same power block is used for conventional fuel and solar heat, saving a significant cost. Even with stored energy solutions, there is a limit on the amount of storage, so fuel back-up provides a solution in an ISCC plant in providing base-load power.
There are a number of solar trough concentration companies with significant investment in their technologies who would like to realize the benefit of SHEC Energy's higher temperature technologies, including higher temperature thermal storage solutions. SHEC Energy is able to provide its technology in a hybrid plant in which the trough technology can provide the preheat to 400°C and SHEC Energy's systems would boost this heat to a higher level in the range of 570°C for direct higher temperature turbine operation or to 800°C to 900°C for thermal storage. SHEC Energy is currently working with a solar trough manufacturer for this purpose.
Stirling engines convert heat energy to mechanical energy very efficiently. Solar Stirling engines typically could be sized in the range from 10 kilowatts (KW) to 25KW. One solar collector would operate one stirling engine. SHEC Energy's technology is directly applicable to the stirling engine. With SHEC Energy's highly efficient solar receiver technology, about twice as much energy can be delivered to the engine. Since the engine has a certain power size, this would result in a much smaller solar collector being required to deliver the same amount of solar energy to the engine compared to current technologies. SHEC Energy is currently partnered with a stirling engine manufacturer to marry our respective technologies into a higher efficiency, lower cost solar stirling engine solution. This technology will be able to deliver smaller scale power generation solutions from 10KW up to the 10MW range. These systems may be grid connected or grid independent.
Thermal acoustic engines convert heat energy to sound (mechanical energy). This technology can operate in the range of 750°C to 3,000°C. SHEC Energy's receiver technology is the only technology that can prevent massive emissivity losses in this temperature range. SHEC Energy is currently working with a thermo acoustic engine company on a joint development to marry these technologies.
SHEC Energy's mirror technology is applicable to Concentrating Photo Voltaic (CPV) applications. SHEC is currently working with one of the most advanced multi-junction PV manufacturers in the world. We are also working with a semi-conductor manufacturing firm for the semiconductor assembly of our CPV receiver module. This technology is applicable for day only power generation from small to large scale.
